Anna-Lisa Palmer, Dr Phillip Palmer, April 2011 - At the recent ADA Congress in Brisbane in March, Prime Practice conducted a survey of 250 dentist and team members to get a snap shot of the dental industry today.
Question 1: What are the top 3 challenges in your practice?
Options:
- Case presentation/ acceptance
- Understanding financials
- Poor systems and procedures
- Finding and retaining quality team members
- Appointment book control
- Clinical issues
- Getting new patients
- HR issues
Results:
| Practice Owners | Team | Non- owner Dentists |
|---|---|---|
|
1) Finding and retaining quality team members 2) Understanding financials 3) Case presentation/ acceptance |
1) Appointment book control, eg: emergencies and cancellations 2) Poor systems and procedures 3) HR issues |
1) Understanding financials 2) Case presentation/ acceptance 3) Appointment book control, eg: emergencies and cancellations |
Analysis:
1.The top challenges for dentists relate not to their clinical skills, but rather to practice management issues: team members, financials, appointment book control and case presentation. Perhaps the reason dentists find these skills challenging is because:
a. They are typically not part of the curriculum in dental school.
b. The majority of dentists spend all of their continuing education time in clinical areas.
While every dentist has an obligation to ensure that their clinical dentistry is up to date, they seem to recognise that their greatest stressors and indicators of practice success will be in practice management (communication skills, human resource management, marketing and leadership).Their focus for their continuing education should reflect this.
2. It is interesting that the number one challenge for non-owner dentists lies in understanding financials. In our discussions with non-owner dentists, this is a growing challenge because:
a. Many self-employed/contractor dentists are needing to do many extra, complicated calculations with their pays than they used to (For example claiming back GST, incorporating themselves, superannuation, etc).
b. Traditionally non-owner dentists would work in practices where all the backroom bookkeeping and admin is done onsite. The non-owner would get an insight into the backroom of a dental practice that would serve as training for later in their careers. Lately, with the growing number of dentists working in corporate practices this insight has been lost due to the backroom administration being taken off site.
3. Neither practice owner nor non-owner dentist have selected “Poor systems and procedures” as one of the top challenges in their practice, but the team have selected this as a major concern. Perhaps this is due to the dentists often not being aware of the stress and problems that arise in the day-to-day administration of the practice.
Additionally, it is possible that the reason why the number one concern for the dentist is “finding and retaining quality team members” may be due to the fact that the dentist has not realised the need for systems and procedures and:
a. It may be hard for (even good quality) staff to work efficiently and effectively without good systems and procedures in place.
b. There may be a high turnover of staff because of the stress created by a practice with poor systems and procedures.
Question 2. This year I would like to (in order of agreement):
Options:
- Make more profit
- Decrease stress
- Feel in control of my practice
- Learn more clinical skills
- Work less
Results:
| Practice Owners | Team | Non-owner Dentists |
|---|---|---|
|
1) Make more profit 2) Decrease stress 3) Feel in control of my practice 4) Learn more clinical skills 5) Work less |
1) Make more profit 2) Feel in control of my practice 3) Decrease stress 4) Learn more clinical skills 5) Work less |
1) Make more profit 2) Decrease stress' 3) Learn more clinical skills 4) Feel in control of my practice 5) Work less |
Analysis:
If you were to ask dentists how they thought the team members would answer this question I think you would have heard a resounding unanimous answer that the team want to work less as their first priority. The results of our survey show the contrary. The team’s number one priority in the coming year is the same as everyone else...for the business to make more profit.
This is something that is often overlooked by a practice owner. Even though sometimes it may seem that your team is working against you, it may just be a communication problem that comes between you both understanding each others’ motivations. Sometimes setting up mutually beneficial (for the dentist and team member) bonus systems that are trackable and achievable, can confirm that you are all on common ground.
Question 3: How would you rate your clinical and business skills?
Results:
| Practice Owners | Team | Non-owner Dentists |
|---|---|---|
|
Clinical skills: good (4/5) Business skills: poor (1.5/5) |
Clinical skills: good (4/5) Business skills: average (3/5) |
Clinical skills: average (3/5) Business skills: poor (1.5/5) |
Analysis:
It is remarkable how low dentists seem to rate their business skills (both rate 1.5/5) perhaps this is for the same two reasons that we mentioned above:
1. They are typically not part of the curriculum in dental school.
2. The majority of dentists spend all of their continuing education time in clinical areas.
As a result of this survey we at Prime Practice are feeling very satisfied knowing that we are able to help dentists with their biggest challenges in their practices, providing a much needed service to the dental community- not only for the practice owners, but for the team and non-owner dentists too.